Lola T-332 Formula 5000 Car, VPJ- Al Unser

I've been dying to get to this kit for a year now, and I finally just decided to dive in, even though I still have some other projects in motion.

This is Kevin Kuzman's Silver City Models resin and white metal kit, which will be my first of this type. It's going to be fun getting this one built. Like many race cars, there were multiple liveries, but I am going to do this one of Al Unser:

Here's the kit:

Right now I am just in cleanup mode, and getting ready to mock it up. In doing so, I'm looking at areas that I could improve upon without creating a major project out of this. One thing that jumped out at me right away were the brakes. Since they are so visible on this kit, I figured they could use an upgrade. I had some Detail Master vented discs that are the perfect size, along with some calipers as well, but I needed to make some brake hats to be able to use the rotors. This looked like an opportunity for me to use my lathe for the first time. I have no machining skills (yet), but this is a simple enough project to learn on. The material I had was too soft, but I still managed to make something usable, ugly, but usable. Hey, I made something!

The exhaust pipes don't have a support bracket in the kit, so I decided to make my own. I did it in brass because I thought it would be stronger, but I could have done it in styrene in a tenth of the time. I struggled with it for a couple of days, thinking about it many hours and several do-overs! All for a simple part...

I also re=bent the headers so they came out more to the side rather than down to match the references I had, but I broke one of the white metal pipes, so I decided to replace the pipe with aluminum tube. It's a little rounder than the original casting and might help save weight on the model which will help save wear and tear when travelling. This sucker is going to be heavy!

Excellent subject and a great start. I am in till the end on this one for sure.

Thanks, Buck!

Skid wrote:

Nice work Art.

Appreciate it, Al!

pete s wrote:

Looking good Art. Interesting kit of a cool subject.

I know what you mean about heavy models, as the Sterling is quite heavy. I built a fixture for my box that support the chassis at several points when traveling. Has worked well so far.

I bet it is! I never thought much about it, but last month I was talking to Clay Kemp and he mentioned the solid resin tires on one of his 1/16 pro mods moved so much travelling that it shook stuff loose. Good to hear from you...

Spent a bunch more time getting this thing mocked up and everything fitting. The kit provides some styrene rod for the rear radius rods, but I elected to use Piano wire instead.

I tried to mock up the front end as is, but it just wasn't working. The parts were just moving around too much, so I pinned the A-arms with wire.

I also pinned the front wings.

The kit doesn't come with side plates for the rear wing, just a sheet of styrene. I printed a pic that has the correct shape for version I'm building and the pic just happened to print almost the exact same size. So I cut out the end plate and used it as a template. I glued the paper patter and two sheets of styrene together and cut them out together. Then I pinned them as well and attached them permanently.

Thanks for the comments, guys. It's no Tamiya kit, that's for sure, but that's the challenge, I guess.

Finally, I'm starting to get some color on this thing. Because the motor, trans, and manifold are all molded as one piece, I'm using Bob Downie's silly putty trick to do the masking after I hit the block with Chevy Engine Red.

Good to see the progress on this one Art. This is looking fantastic. The paint, especially with the gold bmf, is very good looking. I love the contrast between the white, red and gold. Very striking. Also great work on the whole powertrain.

Is the clear going over all that is on the bodywork now? Paint, decals and bmf?